


Forget-Me-Not

by rallamajoop



Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher (Video Game), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Amnesia, Gen, M/M, Pining, Pre-Blood & Wine, Slashy gen, Witcher 1 - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-23
Updated: 2021-02-06
Packaged: 2021-03-14 05:00:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,633
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28915002
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rallamajoop/pseuds/rallamajoop
Summary: While still suffering from his amnesia, in the wake of the battle of Vizima, Geralt's injuries are tended by a barber-surgeon whom he certainly doesn't recognise.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia & Emiel Regis Rohellec Terzieff-Godefroy, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Emiel Regis Rohellec Terzieff-Godefroy
Comments: 50
Kudos: 161
Collections: Regis Rocks





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into 中文-普通话 國語 available: [勿忘我 【雷狼】【雷吉斯/杰洛特 无差】](https://archiveofourown.org/works/29751096) by [Maytianhuanxi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maytianhuanxi/pseuds/Maytianhuanxi)



> Loosely set somewhere around the end of the first Witcher game (give or take the many vagaries of the timeline) – not that you should need to know anything much more about those events to follow what's going on here.

Spot fires are still burning in the streets of Vizima when Geralt makes his way back to the field hospital, but the battle is over and there's time enough to find someone to sew him back together before the next lord or ruler finds himwith some urgent task to be done. The wound at his back is still bleeding sluggishly, what must be over an hour since he received it, though he scarcely remembers the moment through the haze of noise and adrenaline. He's too tired, his wits muddled by the fading effects of too many potions, to judge how bad it might be, but it needs seeing to before he collapses to sleep this day off.

Going to Shani is so obvious that only on arrival does he realise he should have known better. The battle has supplied her with a waiting queue of patients whose need is far greater than Geralt's. It's more than he deserves that she sees him at all, even to wave him away into the hands of some volunteer assistant who may be able to find time for him, eventually—even her assistants have queues waiting for their aid. 

A shy girl in the dull grey smock of a temple novice helps him to peel off his bloodied leathers and makeshift dressing while he waits. She's not much for conversation; the poor thing so unprepared to deal with the sight of Geralt of Rivia, shirtless and bloody, that she's more or less tongue-tied from the moment she lays eyes on him. He wonders if his reputation is to blame or whether she'd have responded thus to any grim-faced, wounded soldier in need of similar assistance. Was he ever that young? It's more than Geralt can picture, and for once, he's not even sure whether his shattered memory is to blame. 

As he sits and waits, a boy in a dented helmet and an ill-fitting, blood-soaked jerkin is sat down opposite by a filthy old man who, under the filth, is probably his father. The man is likewise bloody, though whether some of that blood is his own Geralt can only guess. It disturbs him to realise he hopes perhaps it is, because for one boy—and despite his soldierly dress, it's hard to believe the boy is much older than the novice Geralt just failed to speak to—to lose that much blood paints a very bleak picture of his prospects. The boy and his father seem to be in a different queue to Geralt, but one has to wonder if it will make a difference. 

Coming here was a mistake, he decides glumly. He likely doesn't need more than a few stitches. Surely Triss or Zoltan could have managed, or at the worst, found him someone who could—who didn't have half the walking wounded of Vizima beating down their door. But now he's here, and Shani made it clear he won't be allowed to leave without being seen, and he certainly doesn't have the energy to protest. 

He hasn't quite finished that thought when he hears his name. " _Well_. Geralt of Rivia, I presume?" 

Geralt turns to see a slight, elderly man in a bloodied apron. He frowns. This again. "Do I know you? Or am I meeting another of Dandelion's fans?" 

A moment—slightly too long a moment—passes before the man replies, but his voice is light enough that Geralt thinks no more about it. "No, I fear I must be counted among those who first learned your name and reputation from the latter. Nevertheless, how may I... ah, I see," he says, as Geralt twists to show him the gash. "Well, come over here, let's get that seen to." 

Geralt glances briefly at the hunched figure of the boy in the dented helmet... but no, there's probably no point in asking. Geralt's not here to question Shani's triage system. He turns his attention back to the old man who addressed him. 

"And you are?" Geralt prompts him, standing up. 

The man gives him a thin smile. "Call me Emiel. Barber-surgeon by trade." He may have gone on, but this is the moment Geralt notices that the man's hand is shaking. 

"Hey," he cuts in, "Are you alright? You sure you're up to this?" Now that Geralt looks at him more closely, he's pale as a wraith, with dark rings sunk deep beneath the sockets of his eyes. There's an awful fragility to Emiel that wouldn't look out of place among those lying around them on pallets on the floor. 

"Oh," says Emiel. He grasps his shaking hand with the other, a trifle guilty. "You must forgive me. I am... ah, recovering from a malady of my own." He moves to a bench in a corner of the room and takes a deep draught from an earthenware cup containing some foul-smelling herbal concoction. The grimace as he swallows the mixture suggests nothing better about the taste, but with this ritual complete, he appears to compose himself. If his hands are still shaking, Geralt can no longer discern it. 

Emiel gives him another apologetic look. "In other circumstances I would be still convalescing myself—alas, the city can ill-afford to pick and choose among its physicians today, and all hands are needed, so I have volunteered myself in whatever capacity I am found able. Take a seat, please." He waves Geralt to a stool, facing away from him so as to examine the wound. Presently, Geralt feels the touch of a damp cloth wiping away the worst of the blood. "Man or monster? Man, I would guess, given this would appear to be a blade wound." 

"You guess correctly." It's some relief that Emiel has wits enough about him to recognise as much. 

"I see you've already applied... hm, one of your witchers' concoctions, I assume? Alcohol-based, from the smell. I realise the specifics likely represent a trade secret, but in the interests of avoiding any risk of adverse reactions with my own..." 

"No secret. It's just alcohol. All I had to hand." And poorly applied at that, given the angle, but better than nothing. 

"Ah. Well, Geralt, this will need a number of stitches, but you've plainly survived much worse." A second cloth, this one soaked in stinging fluid, wipes cleanly over the cut. 

"Your... malady," says Geralt. "Should I ask?" 

"It isn't the plague, if that's what worries you. Nor is it contagious. But if you will permit me to avoid the... complicated and rather personal subject of the specifics, suffice to say I was brought back from much closer to death than I have any desire to venture again." Geralt feels the familiar sting of a needle at his back as Emiel makes his first stitch. "Though I suppose, Geralt, that must be true of the both of us." 

"Is that a question?" Geralt asks in return, though not without the faint suspicion Emiel is deliberately changing the subject. 'Complicated and personal'—well, that means either it was much worse than Emiel wants to let on, or illegal, or cause for embarrassment. Venereal disease, maybe. Emiel seems a little old for that, but you never know. Aloud, he says, "I'll have to disappoint you: I have no recollection of how I did it. I have no recollection of much at all before they found me alive, half a world away from where they tell me I died." 

"Well, I suppose we must consider amnesia a small price to pay, under the circumstances," says Emiel. "I must confess," he goes on, more conversationally, "when I heard someone had appeared in Vizima claiming to be the miraculously reborn Geralt of Rivia, I naively assumed it must be a fraud. Some scoundrel exploiting the reputation of the original, crying amnesia when pressed with questions exceeding his knowledge of the subject—you know the type." 

It's not the first time Geralt has encountered such doubts, but there's something rather refreshing about Emiel's healthy skepticism. "Still could be," he says, letting himself enjoy the idea. "What makes you so sure?" 

"Your witcher's eyes, for one—exceedingly difficult to fake," says Emiel, reasonably. Geralt feels a slight tug as he ties off his stitch. "The medallion, likewise. The white hair—very distinctive, and apparently genuine." 

"You can tell?" 

" _Barber_ -surgeon, it's not just a title. And... if you'll forgive me, I couldn't help but note the scars of three evenly-placed stab wounds on your abdomen. Consistent with the gauge of a pitchfork. The same injury which reputedly felled the original Geralt of Rivia. In summation, if you are a fraud, you're a remarkably good one." 

Geralt is genuinely impressed; Emiel couldn't have had more than a minute or two to look at him from that direction, and the scars in question are neither the largest or the ugliest he might have noticed. The man obviously has a surgeon's eye for detail. 

"Could be a doppler," Geralt offers on a whim. "They can copy someone down to that kind of detail." He knows this—the idea comes to him that he's seen it demonstrated, though under what circumstances he can't recall. More likely it's something he learnt in his training; dopplers are supposed to be all but extinct nowadays. 

"A doppler, mimicking a member of a profession regularly expected to handle silver weaponry? I'm not sure I find that very likely," says Emiel, taking the idea in good humour. "But it's possible, I suppose, and how would I know? You tell me, Geralt— _are_ you a doppler?" 

Well, isn't that just the million-oren question? "You're assuming I'd know," says Geralt, a trifle morose. "Maybe I shifted into Geralt of Rivia, took a bad blow to the head, and now I'm suffering the consequences." 

"A novel theory," Emiel allows. "One moment... ah, hold this for me, would you?" Geralt is handed a length of bandage lined with foil. "Should I take it," Emiel goes on, deftly pulling his needle through another stitch, "that you have found waking up in the supposed life of Geralt of Rivia a somewhat... disorienting experience?" 

"You should." Perhaps this is more than he'd be eager to admit were he less exhausted, but Geralt is very, very tired, and something about Emiel invites one to unburden himself. "When someone takes offense at the sight of me, I don't know whether it's my face, my profession, or some personal slight I committed against him years in the past. Every other man in the street thinks he knows more about my life than I do, and I haven't the self-awareness to tell what they've got wrong. Why, to listen to people, I've slept with every sorceress in the Northern Realms, ridden with the Wild Hunt, butchered a whole town after a disagreement with a sorcerer over some woman, kidnapped a princess of the Elder Blood, and can count both a dragon and a higher vampire among my friends." 

Emiel's hands still briefly as he seems to consider this. "Some of that would seem a mite unlikely," he allows. "But I'd be the last to advise you to take everything from Dandelion's ballads as gospel truth." 

Geralt is inclined to agree. He's starting to suspect even Dandelion himself doesn't remember anymore which parts he made up for his ballads. 

"Given that word of your amnesia has begun to spread," says Emiel, who seems to be choosing his words carefully, "I would imagine you might also be at risk of those who would, ah, attempt to take advantage of the fact." 

"It's begun," Geralt tells him, gloomily. "I've already been accosted by an 'old friend' whom I apparently owed a substantial sum of money. He wasn't very convincing. And a woman who insisted I was the father of her child, and considerably in arrears in alimony. I informed her that witchers are infertile, but she wasn't put off." 

Emiel gives a soft huff, not quite laughter, but there's something strange in his voice when he speaks again. "So it goes. I fear for the next genuine old friend of yours from unlikely circumstances who finds himself having to convince you of his good intentions." He hesitates a moment. "Has anything, ah, come back to you?" 

Geralt shrugs a little, though only with his good shoulder. "Bits and pieces. Muscle memory. Tricks of the trade. Impersonal stuff, mostly—how to track a drowner or kill a harpy. Things I guess I learned young enough that it's deeply ingrained. Don't remember how I learned it, but it's there. Keeping me alive." 

"Something to be grateful for, then," says Emiel. "Well, Geralt, I can't answer all your questions for you, but I can offer you this much—you're _not_ a doppler." 

Geralt looks over his shoulder, raising an eyebrow. "How's that?" 

"You're holding a silver-lined dressing without discomfort. A most useful material, silver, in my profession as well as yours—it has disinfectant properties. When applied to beings with no inherent sensitivity, of course." 

Geralt eyes the bandages in his hands. "Nicely done. Hope it won't ruin your theory that I'm holding them by the fabric layer. Haven't touched the foil." 

"True," Emiel agrees, "But I would add that the disinfectant I've applied to your wound _also_ contains colloidal silver. Though careful handling is certainly a valid strategy for silver objects, I promise you the application of silver solution to an open wound would be excruciating for any post-conjunction species. Ergo, you are human. Or as much so as any member of your profession. Pass me back the bandage, please—we're ready to wrap your wound." 

"Are you this good value with all your patients?" Geralt asks. Behind him, he hears the click of scissors as Emiel cuts the dressing to size. 

"Unlikely. But one tries. Raise your arm, please." Geralt obeys, then holds still as Emiel applies a length of clean, unlined bandage to hold the foil-lined dressing in place. The impulse is strong to protest the wound doesn't need such extravagant treatment; it isn't infected, and witchers are, if not wholly immune to infection, far more resistant than most. Or he should offer to pay Emiel for his time and attention, being one of the few patients here tonight who can certainly afford to. But something in Emiel's manner tells Geralt that raising either subject will be a waste of breath, if not actual cause for offense, so in the end he says nothing. 

"Well, there you have it," Emiel concludes. "The wound should be kept clean, of course—the silver should enhance the time you may leave the dressing without changing it, but you will of course need the stitches removed within a week or so—perhaps less, given your witcher's metabolism. I cannot promise to be available to aid you in doing so, but..." 

"That's fine. I'll manage." If he's still in Vizima then, Shani will probably insist on inspecting her volunteer's handiwork. 

"Well, on that note," Emiel concludes, "unless there is anything else I can do for you, I feel it may be time to concede to my own limitations and leave the care of the remaining wounded to other capable hands. Would you be so kind as to make my intentions known to one of the novices as you leave? They should know whom to pass the message on to." 

Geralt stands, flexing his shoulder slightly to test the range of movement the bandages have left him. On facing Emiel again, the man seems somehow even smaller and more fragile than he remembered. Fatigue, he supposes. "Are you sure you're alright to walk out of here? The battle might be over, but the streets have been safer than they will be tonight." 

Emiel gives him a wan smile. "I thank you, Geralt—your concern is very kind, but for the moment, unnecessary. I am fortunate enough to have a... an old friend waiting for me, who has found it in his heart to nurse me through the worst of my weakness. He is more than capable of seeing me safely back to our lodgings." 

_Lodgings_ , thinks Geralt. That's interesting. "You're not from Vizima?" 

"No. My companion and I are visiting a mutual friend." 

Geralt frowns. He's far too tired for this—too tired to notice silver foil on a length of bandage after a such an obvious opening, even—but there's been something ever so slightly off about Emiel and his story from the start, and it's becoming impossible to ignore. "A sick man, travelling to a closed city in the time of a plague? That's bold." 

Emiel waves a hand. "A calculated risk. I won't bore you with the details." 

_I won't bore you with the details._ A polite fiction if ever he heard one. But what right does Geralt have to press? Let the man keep his secrets. "If you say so. Well, thank you, Regis. I hope staying to look after me hasn't set you back too far." 

The long pause that follows isn't the first Geralt has noted in the course of their conversation; it lasts long enough to make him rethink his words, but nothing comes to him to explain it. "The pleasure is all mine, Geralt," Emiel tells him, before Geralt can come to any conclusion. He bows, lightly. "I am, as ever, at your service." With that, he sets about tidying his equipment into its various containers, preparing to leave. 

Reluctantly, Geralt turns away and makes for the door. 

He's halfway there when the commotion begins. A slow, horrible wail comes from across the room—it's coming from the filthy man who'd held his son's hand while Geralt waited. Beside them stands another of Shani's volunteers, rising slowly to her feet after pronouncing the findings of her examination. Hesitantly, she offers a hand to the wailing man, but with a howl of rage he launches himself at her, knocking her to the ground with his hands around her throat. 

Geralt has taken two steps towards the scene before someone beats him there: a man in a black coat appears as if from nowhere, drags the howling father from his target and slams him against the wall, one-handed and with terrifying ease. For a long moment the two men lock eyes like that, frozen in tableau, then the man in black leans forward, seems to whisper something in the other's ear, and he sags, slumping against the wall, then curling to the floor when the man in black releases his hold. And there the dead boy's father stays, rocking slightly as he sobs. The man in black gives him one last, pitying look, and turns away. 

By chance, his eyes meet Geralt's—a startlingly pale blue, Geralt notes, as a shiver goes down his spine. He looks away. 

Nearby, he sees Emiel helping Shani's volunteer to her feet. Geralt finds himself thinking over what the surgeon had said, about his companion who would be more than capable of seeing him safely home. He believes it, now, though he couldn't have rightly said what made him sure. 

He's already decided not to ask, he reminds himself. Not every mystery in Vizima is his to solve.


	2. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I wasn't going to continue Forget-Me-Not – I'd always seen it as the sort of missing-scene that could slide neatly into canon without leaving a crack. But then it became apparent from the feedback that just _how_ it ought to fit into canon wasn't nearly as obvious to everyone else as I'd supposed. So what the hell – have an epilogue, set during the early events of _Blood & Wine_.

The bottle has passed back and forth between them only a handful of times before Geralt catches himself hoping the ravens will take their time. He's missed this—not just Regis' wine (unfinished or otherwise, it's worth missing), but Regis' _company_. Just sitting with him and talking—well, mostly listening, when Regis gets started, but Geralt's never had a dull conversation with the man (probably no-one has). He hadn't even realised how much he'd missed this until he had it back. Regis has always been easy to talk to.

Still, the thing Geralt really wants to ask takes some working up to—even with the invitation. One more swig of mandrake, he tells himself at first. Two swigs later, tongue as loosened as it'll ever be, he finally decides, _what the hell_. 

"So..." he begins, "Vizima. Back in 1270, right after the battle. Shani's field hospital." He gives Regis a meaningful look. "That _was_ you, wasn't it?" 

"Ah," says Regis, smiling. "I was wondering when we might get to that." 

"You bastard," Geralt laughs, stupidly relieved. "Do you have any idea how bad that messed me up after my memory came back? Could only figure I must've mixed up two completely different memories—some time you really did patch me up back in the day, and some ordinary surgeon from Vizima with a passing resemblance to you, whoever _that_ was." He takes another swig from the bottle, declining, for the moment, to pass it back. "Or maybe it was all some weird dream I'd had—my subconscious trying to tell me something, back before I'd remembered enough to understand what." 

"Mm, the memory is known to play such tricks, even on the best of us," says Regis, nodding. "You were hardly foolish to assume something of the sort was to blame." He hesitates. "I suppose you'll want to know why I said nothing to you at the time." 

"Maybe I can guess," Geralt smiles. "No easy way for a vampire to convince a witcher without a memory he's his long-lost friend." 

"A consideration, certainly," Regis agrees. "But if I'm to be honest with both of us... had I truly put my mind to it, I could have found a way. I could have asked you to introduce me to Dandelion, for example—he'd have had little trouble assuring you I was who I claimed to be." 

Now _that_ would have been a surreal conversation. Regis must be going somewhere with this, though—he wouldn't have brought it up otherwise. "More than a little trouble, maybe," Geralt allows. "Even if I'd had my memory then, I might not have recognised you right away—you looked _awful_ , Regis. Like you'd aged a good thirty years—at least as a human would reckon it. And been starved for most of them." 

Regis nods grimly. "Coming back from the dead will do that to a man, I fear." 

Something occurs to Geralt then—a connection he'd not made before. "That was Dettlaff with you, wasn't it? The man in black—the friend you said was caring for you." 

"It was indeed—not much gets by you in the end, does it, my friend? He was none too pleased that I insisted upon helping at the hospital at all. He felt that visiting Vizima at all was more than enough excitement for me in my infirmity; wanted me to go home and rest. Fortunately, he has no medical qualifications of his own to speak of, so I could confidently disregard his advice." 

Geralt considers this. "In his position, I might have agreed with him." 

"See?" says Regis, not the least displeased. "It's as I told you: the two of you have more in common than you give him credit for." 

"We have _you_ in common," says Geralt, pointing at Regis with the wine bottle. "You've still got to convince me of anything more than that. Besides, we were talking about why you never asked me to take you to Dandelion." 

Regis nods, and sighs softly. "I suppose, in the end, it was because I could not bear the thought of spending longer in the company of a man who was both my very dear friend, and at once _not_ the man I remembered at all. You cannot imagine my joy at finding you alive and well—give or take a few memories, of course. But the notion of having to begin again... A Geralt of Rivia who understood that he knew me, but remembered none of the times we had spent together, who could not help but be suspicious of my nature..." Again, he sighs, his face gone soft and thoughtful. "And what good was I to him, in my impoverished state? A few hours in the surgeon's chair very nearly proved beyond me that day, and I was so very tired by the time you appeared... No, I had neither the courage nor the fortitude to face you honestly then. I hope you can find it in your heart to forgive me." 

"Forgive you?" Geralt wants to laugh. He shakes his head, disbelieving. "Regis, you're _alive_. You're still a bastard for leaving me wondering, but I could forgive you a lot worse." 

Regis looks away, but makes no attempt to hide his smile. "Thank you, Geralt. You can't imagine the good it does me to hear that." When he looks back at Geralt, however, his gaze has turned speculative. "Though while we're on the subject, I do have to ask, once your memory returned... did it ever occur to you to look for me?" 

Geralt takes one last swig and passes the bottle back again. "Starting where? Tracking a higher vampire would have been a little beyond me." 

"True, but you could always have asked Aritimi—the, ah 'Queen of the Night' as she likes to call herself in your tongue. I know you spoke to her, and you must have realised she was the other old friend that Dettlaff and I were staying with. Or there was Shani—she'd certainly have remembered me. We only spoke briefly when I presented myself to her as a volunteer, but I fear I made an impression. It hadn't occurred to me to give myself a pseudonym, and it soon arose that she was far too familiar with Dandelion's own accounts of our story not to recognise the significance of a barber-surgeon going by the name of 'Emiel Regis'." 

Geralt can picture it all, far too easily, though one thing makes him frown. "She didn't say anything about it to me." 

"No," Regis agrees, "she was far too canny to believe I was the real thing. I expect she took me for a madman, or perhaps a fugitive trying to assuage a guilty conscience with good works, fearful of revealing his real name. But she was far too short-handed to turn down any man with a steady hand who brought his own needles, so she left one of her assistants to keep an eye on me and set me to work." 

"That does sound like Shani," Geralt smiles. 

Regis gives him a knowing look. "But that only brings us back to my question for you: did it ever occur to you to ask? To seek me out." He drinks, then holds out the bottle once again. 

Geralt takes it, and takes another drink. "I... maybe it did. There was enough keeping me busy after my memory came back that I had other things to worry about, but then... no, I could've made the time to visit Shani. Or your 'queen of the night', I suppose." Wistfully, he looks up at the sky. "But... I guess I didn't particularly care to hear what I already thought I knew: that I'd imagined you that day. Easier to keep that little bit of doubt I still had left, even if it was a false hope—that you might be out there somewhere. Just waiting for your moment." 

There's silence for a little while, in which Regis takes the proffered bottled back again, drains it, and puts it aside. 

"Geralt," he says, "I realise you are not the most tactile person, and that I've already hugged you once since we were reunited, so it may be slightly too much to ask..." 

Geralt is already on his feet, pulling Regis into a hug before he can finish. He doesn't let go. "Missed you too, you bastard," he murmurs into Regis' shoulder. "Now don't you _dare_ go dying on me again." 

"All the same to you, my friend," said Regis, with feeling. 

"Deal," says Geralt, and means it.


End file.
